22 April 2014

The Endless Buffet

insatiableadjective1. (of an appetite or desire) impossible to satisfy.That is what comes up when you look for the word insatiable. It is a voracious hunger that haunts the being. Asking to be fed again and again. Granting short respites and clawing you again for more. Insatiability, I think, is a state of being. It is an intrinsic part of one's self that surfaces from time to time despite the conditioning that you subject yourself to.Tonight I was counting the projects I had on my plate.

A couple of private programming projects

Learning clojure

Last two travels have not been documented

A few topics pending to write on

Then there is that big stack of unread books

I need to get back in shape

Need to ride more

And those are just the ones that I desperately need to do. These do not include the ones that do not strike me with a sense of urgency. I have not sketched in close to three years. I still have my gear around in hope that I would want to get back to it. The stories that I started and plotted need to be substantiated. But I am not even remotely inclined towards it right now. And I have learnt absolutely nothing new of late. The guitar is rarely picked up, the harmonicas are forgotten.One might choose to say that it is a problem with my focus. If only I would focus, I would be done with many a things. But clearly, there is nothing to be done away with. Very few of the things on the list can be struck off. Most of then persist despite having appeased them. Ride today and a week later you see it back on the list. Writing is another such phantom. And you can never be done with reading. It is an endless abyss that you have fallen into. Not much you can do about it now. Gaming is an addiction. No, the problem is not with focus.The problem lies with the number of hours one has to oneself. If I work to earn my bread (or more than that) I will have obligations towards my employer. There are stipulated hours of work one needs to put in so as to remain on schedule. So the number of hours left for doing things on the list is countable. And those hours are never enough. I usually find myself in a maddening frenzy when I do get these hours to myself; doing one thing after the other. At times unable to break myself off one project in order to devote time to the next, for these are all things that I love; things that I do of my own volition.One simply has to find the time for them all. Prioritize them according to how long you have ignored them. Beg their forgiveness, kiss their hand and please them. Then put them back on to the plate and choose another offering : an endless buffet for an insatiable glutton.